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Comment by bjoli | Hacker News Reader

So, it is slightly better than a 1050TI. What does that mean? I do nothing to stress my graphics card at all, so explain it like I am 5, I guess...

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A 1050Ti is a three generation old card and was bottom of the line when it came out, so not too bad for integrated graphics.

It's plenty for everything but modern gaming, and since those games aren't likely to be ported to ARM on Mac anytime soon it's not a huge problem. Apple has always had something of a rocky relationship with game publishers, at least on the Mac. Lots of older games will probably work fine, assuming the driver situation isn't a nightmare. Apple is somewhat notorious for neglecting graphics card drivers unfortunately.

Saying that it's plenty for everything but modern gaming isn't saying much either. Every other integrated graphics solution has been fine for everything but modern gaming.

No, many integrated graphics fail at driving things like 4k displays.

GTX 1050 2GB was the bottom of the line when the 1050 Ti came out. Both were released in Oct 2016, there's also GT 1030 which was released few months later.

It looks like World of Warcraft at the very least is getting a day-one Apple ARM build, which suggests that porting isn't too bad. It should be a relatively easy transition for any game that already ran on macOS or iOS.

A 1050ti has a TDP of 75w, and the Apple M1 has somewhere between 10-18w (not sure if actual numbers have been published, but I didn't see them.)

10W published for MBA

And that is for the whole SoC, not just GPU

Yup, whereas the CPU in the SoC is roughly a little better in multicore than a desktop Ryzen 3600X and single core plays way at the top of the Zen 3 line.

It is actually worse than a 1050TI but it is better than a 1050TI in MacOS. It is a meaningless comparison when the GPU is half as fast in the OS tested compared to the same GPU in Windows. In other words: People are cherry-picking the results they like.

The GTX 1050 Ti was a lower-mid-range gaming card a couple generations ago. AFAIK it can still run most new games, possibly with compromises for smooth performance (low graphical settings, 30 FPS, or sub-1080p resolution).

Considering that the devices that were replaced were integrated GPUs only, the fact that these devices now run close to current gen discrete GPUs is a big jump.

The bigger question to be answered is whether this is a baseline that will be surpassed handily by the higher end released coming later, or that this is about as good as it gets now.

I'm assuming that the reason these were released separately was because the later arriving devices have significantly differing SoC's with even better performance, and maybe even discrete GPUs with variable, scaling performance.

The 1050Ti is hardly a current gen GPU. It was a budget card when it came out years ago.

>run close to current gen discrete GPUs is a big jump

1050 Ti is not current gen. Geforce 10 series have been out for more than 4 years now. the current gen is RTX 30 series

I was trying to say 'close to a recent gen discrete CPU' not 'close (in performance) to a current gen CPU.'

1050 is just one generation removed from most current discrete GPUs, I don't believe the 3000 series is out yet on laptops, the 2080 just came out last year.

> the fact that these devices now run close to current gen discrete GPUs is a big jump.

The 1050 Ti (4 years old) has about the same performance as a GTX 680. A card from 2012.

This comparison makes absolutely no sense. You'd want to compare the M1 against either the current generation integrated, such as the Vega 8 or 11 in the Ryzen 4xxx mobile CPUs or the Intel Xe-LP in the current tiger lake CPUs, or you'd want to compare it against last gen integrated.

Comparing it against a discreet card from 4 years ago with the performance of a card from 8 years ago is just... weird?

Not really a serious gaming option, but OK for lower end (ignoring that Apple doesn't care about gaming in general).

It's certainly 'good enough for government work' as the saying goes, but it's pretty bad for gaming at retina screen resolutions.

hits 60fps steadily which is a nice feat, but just barely and definitely not future proof, but as low power and integrated that's amazing!

my skeptic hat has gotten smaller, still there, just smaller

It's very unlikely that real world gaming performance will match a 1050TI. People are assigning mythical properties to this new SOC.

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